Got Milk?
by libertinium
Summary: Bree's story. -Changed to a oneshot.


(A/N-I had to do it. We share a name for god's sake. Plus, I really just felt like writing about someone being changed NORMALLY, none of this morphine, halfing baby, heart injection with werewolf present stuff. None of that. Here we, Bree's take on Bree's Story. :D.)

The Seattle wind brushed through the sparse, new leaves of early spring, seeping through my thin windbreaker and deep into my bones. I shivered, pulling the loud, brightly colored polyester close around me, trying to escape the inescapable cold.

"Bree-ee-ee!" cried Alex beside me, his tiny fingers gripping mine, tight as we edged along the dark road, elongating my name to several syllables. The little boy glared up at me as viciously as his curly brown locks and wide, innocent eyes allowed him.

"Yes, Alex?" I murmured, keeping my eyes on the shadows more out of habit than actual concern. Seattle had become a dangerous place lately, particularly at night, but I doubted any stalkers would be coming after a 16-year-old girl and her 5-year-old brother walking home from the store, carrying a gallon of milk. We had 1.73 in change, hardly worth mugging us for.

I wouldn't have minded giving up the dough, actually, as the clinking coins in my pocket made an eerily empty noise in the quiet air. The little monkey tugging on my hand was still whining his answer in incomprehensible blubbers.

"and it's coo-oo-old! I dun like it, kin I have yer coo-oo-oo-oat?" He sniffled, his button nose running clear in the frigid night. I rolled my eyes and pulled off my jacket when he shot me the most pathetically adorable puppy dog eyes in the world, shivering as the wet wind hit the bare skin of my arms. He pulled the coat on without so much as a thank you, instead choosing to continue whining, flapping the too-long arms up and down like a massive, disproportionate bird.

"When're we gonna get hoo-oo-oo-ome? I'm ti-ii-ii-ired!" I sighed and scooped him into my arms, juggling the milk unsteadily as I tried to inconspicuously cover my skin with his body warmth.

"A few more blocks, sweetie. I'm sorry I made you walk with me when it's so late. Mommy had a date again, I couldn't leave you at home," Alex frowned, his cherubic face making the expression look almost comically cute.

"I don't like Mommy's new boyfriend," I grimaced. Neither did I, really. But that was, hopefully, for a completely different reason.

"Why not, Al?" I asked, playing along. Not because I really wanted to know, but because I felt a whole lot safer when I couldn't hear the leaves rustling in the dark alleys between buildings. I kept my eyes trained on him so that I couldn't see imaginary movements in my peripheral vision. I held him so that I could remember that nothing could happen to such a sweet kid like him. No human would dare lay a finger on him.

"M'cause he makes you cry," he suddenly whispered in a small voice. I froze in my tracks, unsure of what my face portrayed right then. How… I was sure he was asleep. I'd made sure every time, I was positive.

"What… what do you mean, baby?" I murmured, trying to look nonchalant as I started walking again. I could feel hot tears welling up in my eyes and turned my head to bite my lip, hard.

"When he comes to… wish you good night for long times," my breath caught, but I kept walking, my pace quickening in a desperate wish to be inside and able to think clearly. "He tell you sad stories? I hear him yelling, sometimes…" I blinked back tears, and felt a lump rise in my throat.

Sad stories. That sounded about right. Every night he told me the story of just how pathetic I was, being used by a 45-year-old man because my mother just wanted someone to keep her warm at night since my dad died. No matter the cost. And I just wanted her to be happy. I wanted Alex to be happy. So she doesn't talk about it. I don't talk about it. And I was sure he only talked about it to his friends.

"Yeah, sad stories," I mumbled, feeling unreasonable relief at the glimpse of a porch light in the distance. Two more blocks. The wool hat on my head suddenly felt too hot, too itchy from the rush of blood my tears brought to my face. "Alex, sweetie?" He looked up, effectively distracted at the helpless tone in my voice. It made me smile, the way he always seemed to want to help.

"Mhm?" he asked, his voice nasally from the cold.

"Can you take off my hat? I can't," I replied, lifting my right shoulder sheepishly in an attempt to haul up the heavy milk and squeezing his side lightly with the arm pinning him to my hip. He nodded and reached up.

"Can I wear it?" He asked, pulling the scratchy wool from my head, making my short, practical, brown hair fly every which way. It was his fault, really, that my hair was so short. It used to be all the way to the small of my back, I was so proud of it, growing it out since kindergarten. When he was about 2, and I was 13, he reached up while I was holding him one day, and in a fell swoop, yanked out a huge tuft from my scalp. My mother made me cut it to my shoulders to even it out, but I was so angry with her for not yelling at him that I asked the woman to cut it to my ears in a pathetic form of protest. Call it "middle child syndrome", only for the oldest.

It was then that I realized that the "pageboy" style is not really the way to go if you have the figure of a 12-year-old boy, and it had been only last year, when my hair grew long enough to be considered a bob and I got blunt-cut bangs, that some of the slower boys in my grade realized I was actually a girl. Unfortunately, so did my mother's boyfriends. I clenched my fist around the plastic jug in my hand.

"It used to be Dad's, did you know that?" I asked as he settled the dark green cap on his round head. It was much too big, so he had to hold onto it with two, tiny hands, else it would fly away in a gust of wind. He shook his head and I looked up to see two figures standing beneath a streetlight, waiting for it to change. One was a dowdy woman of about 70, and a taller, middle-aged man. He caught sight of me first and flashed me a grin, the kind of grin that turned my insides right side out and made me want to vomit into the nearest trash can.

"Bree! Alex! I was just telling Mr. Peters about you," called the old woman, waving a gnarled hand and beckoning us closer. I grimaced, of course she was. She was our next door neighbor, a cranky, kooky old bat who hid in her cellar during thunderstorms screaming bloody murder about Russians and Commies.

My mother told me she was simply a "product of her time". I thought she was simply bonkers.

But she did have an uncanny sense of observation. Unnervingly so. She suspected what was going on with my mom's boyfriends. She could hear me sobbing into my pillow at night just as clearly as I could hear her puttering about her house, putting up wards for werewolves and demons.

She was dangerous to the fragile balance my family had been hanging in since my father had passed. And the man who stood next to her, his suit freshly pressed and his leather briefcase glinting dully in the fluorescent of the streetlight, was obviously part of that danger.

Part of me was a little bit relieved to see two other people on the dark street, because my incessant paranoia was having me glance back every three steps and I was worried I was simply willing something to happen at that point. Like in those horror movies where the heroine doesn't get attacked until she knows exactly what she's dealing with and still can't escape. But the rest of me was wishing it was anyone but these two. As we neared the couple, I could see his government-issue nametag, D.S.H.S. Officer Peters, laminated and proudly pinned at his breast. Child Services. Great.

"Hi, Mrs. Reynolds, how are you?" I asked conversationally, faking a smile as I neared. She nodded briskly, obviously not pleased with my indifferent reaction.

"Mr. Peters is a child services officer of the state," she offered, still trying to invoke the panic I felt blossoming in my chest, "Mr. Peters, this is Bree, she's the girl I told you about," the man's salt and pepper eyebrows furrowed together in either sympathy or confusion. I hoped it was the second one as I smiled and nodded.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Peters, I'd shake your hand, but I'm a little bit laden, as you can see," his eyes twinkled as my unconcerned tone rolled effortlessly into a laugh near the end. He didn't believe a word Mrs. Reynolds said, not with seeing how seemingly carefree I was, no way this girl could have her life being taken from her, shard by shard. The lie stuck to my thoughts like frozen caramel, too sweet and sugary, it burned me. Alex was immediately taken with the man's kind expression.

"I'll shake your hand, Mr. Peters," he giggled, extending a tiny hand that was soon enveloped in the man's rough, tanned ones. I gasped as Alex let go of the green hat with his other hand, unthinking, and a sudden gust of wind picked it up.

"Alex!" I scolded, and set him down to see where the hat had gone, stepping from the yellow halo of the streetlight before catching a glimpse as it pirouetted over a chain link fence. "Oh dear, Mrs. Reynolds? Could you be so kind as to take Alex back to your house? He's tired and cold, I won't be a minute," the old woman nodded agreeably, probably hoping to get some answers out of the boy. I doubted he would say anything, Alex had a knack for knowing what should and shouldn't be said to whom.

I couldn't bear to see him in the foster system, not like my mom. She'd had her entire childhood taken from her. I shivered and sprinted across the street after the hat. Foster care was the reason my mother craved attention so much. My father had been a good man, he loved her enough for all of us. But he'd died of a brain aneurysm four years ago. Leaving my mother alone, broken-hearted, and vulnerable to any jerk willing to tell her he loved her, whether he was telling the truth or not. Whether he was sneaking into my bed at night or not.

It really wasn't her fault. She just wanted to be happy. The wind ripped through my thin, red t-shirt and I cursed myself for giving Alex my jacket. But I really couldn't say no to that kid. My fingers were freezing from the cold milk, I switched the gallon to the other hand and rubbed my numb fingers against my jeans to make friction. It didn't work very well.

I wrapped my fingers around the cold links of the fence, leaning my forehead against the rusting metal, my eyes searching the unrelenting darkness for the missing hat. Finally, I saw it, about three feet out. I could probably reach it through the fence, no need to hop barriers with government officials and the like in the area. Bending on one knee, I cringed as wet, freezing mud seeped in through the thick denim of my pants, and stuck my bare arm through the skritchy, rusty links, feeling long, white abrasions being draw on my skin as it brushed the jagged asphalt on the other side.

"Almost… there…" I whispered, my voice strained as my fingers reached. I pressed myself against the fence, my fingertips just barely brushed the wool and I groaned, the hand with the milk unconsciously bent backwards as I focused all my strength on my right hand. Finally, I grasped a corner between my middle and index fingers and eased it towards me. "Yes!" I exclaimed to no one in particular. Or so I thought. I turned my head as a breeze brought a dark chuckle floating towards my back, and met the eyes of the most beautiful boy I'd ever seen.

His hair was cropped short, a silky mane of blond that stuck out as if it was gelled into spikes, but it was obviously natural, the way the wind was able to rustle it. He was tall and lanky, but his long limbs were hard, sinewy. His face was gaunt, but in an achingly striking way, his pale skin seemed to practically glow in the hazy moonlight, it's stark whiteness standing definitively apart from the washed out grey of the wall behind him. His clothing was odd, ripped and torn, and stained with a dark substance that I had a queasy feeling I didn't want to know the name of. Or the source of.

Most disconcerting of all, more so than the angel's face, the model's hair, the nomad's clothes, and the Grecian god's body, were the demon's eyes. They blazed a bright crimson, boring into my marveling face, and I could frame no coherent thoughts. It was then I realized that he was staring, not at my face, but at the milk in my hands, a peculiar expression on his face.

I grinned sheepishly, despite his frightening and beautiful appearance, embarrassed by the compromising condition he'd found me in, knees and hands covered in mud, my arm scratched to oblivion by the fence, though not deeply enough to break the surface, just enough to sting, and a jug of milk clutched tightly in one fist.

His eyes flickered to mine as I tried to stand, and his snowy-white arm shot out quicker than I thought humanly possible. I gasped as he suddenly pulled me up by the front of my shirt with little to no effort. I was always skinny, more angular than soft and feminine like my mom, but I wasn't that weightless, he was stronger than I'd thought.

"I… I don't have any money," I finally managed, my eyes wide. His feline, wide-set mouth curled into a mocking smile. A smile I'd come to recognize. He was hungry. Hungry for something. And by the way his eyes were staring at my face, he was hungry for me. I tried to breathe evenly as he leaned forward and sniffed at my neck. What a pervert. He chuckled again, but the sound was more guttural, like he was also trying to choke back a snarl.

"I promised Victoria I could do this," he murmured to himself, "she'll be proud of me if I bring you back alive," he paused, taking in my resigned expression, "it will definitely be better for you if you don't fight," he whispered. I whimpered quietly as he turned me to face the chain link fence, wrapping stone cold arms around my torso to restrain me.

As if I was going to be able to fight him. A quiet tear slipped down my face as I realized how many times I'd thought that before. How many men had told me it would be "better" if I didn't fight. How could anything be worse than this? How could quietly taking it be better? I became suddenly and achingly aware of two things. The first was his sickly sweet-smelling, icy breath on the bare skin of my neck as he paused. To compose himself, it seemed, seeing how labored his breathing was.

And the second was the heavy jug of liquid still in my hand. There was a brief second when I considered making a snide comment, like they did in the movies, something like "moo", or maybe "cream with your coffee?" as I swung the milk around, into his temple. He let go a moment, in surprise, as the plastic shattered against his skull with a buckling sound and 2 spewed across both our faces. I 

recovered first, though disoriented with how hard his skull must've been, and took off running back towards the street, preparing a loud scream in my lungs, but then granite crushed me against granite again and the air was forced out of my body.

"Scream and, I swear to God, I'll snap your neck so hard they'll think you were an owl when they find you," the hissed words, growled in a harsh, rasping tone, sent torrents of shivers down my spine. And then his mouth was at my neck again. Two words suddenly flashed into my mind and I was laughing, my torso shaking so hard he had to restrain me so much further that I had the gasp for breath. "What the hell could possibly be funny about this?" He asked the question that had popped into my mind right after the hysteria let up and I felt a strange urge to answer him truthfully.

"I just thought of the," I paused taking in a mouthful of air, "perfect thing to say, for before." Another wheezing breath as his mouth paused at the crook of my neck, curious.

"What's that?" he barked in what was supposed to sound like a harsh tone, but I just didn't care anymore. I smirked and floundered for more air.

"Got milk?" I finally choked. And he chuckled curtly before sinking his teeth into my neck.

Blood ran down my bare arms in streams, warming skin as it dripped to the asphalt, mixing with the pearly pools of white liquid that had formed. And then he let me fall to the ground, the thudding in my ears almost drowning out his labored breathing

"That **is** a good one," he growled, and his footsteps echoed hollowly, too lightly in the alleyway,

As he dragged my writhing body by a wrist over the cold ground until I was sprawled on dry cement. That was when the fire engulfed me spreading from my neck like a knife ripping open every pore in my body. I cried out in agony, but it did nothing.

I decided, then, that I was wrong before. There was something much, MUCH worse than not fighting. The last thought I had before the red pain could engulf my mind, was the thought of Alex living in some stranger's house.

"Never," I tried to gasp. But it didn't matter, the boy was gone now, enveloped in shadow somewhere while I suffered along. "Never, Alex, never," I murmured, letting the darkness pull me under, dully aware of the ripping, shredding pain, even in unconsciousness.

(A/N-So what did you think? Please, review, tell me what I did wrong, right, what I didn't do, and what you'd like to see me do. I have a plot, I just need to fill in the details. Do it! Love Always, BreeJune.)


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